ADA Conference: Talk Focused on Devices, Artificial Pancreas Trial a Success?
There is much news coming in from the American Diabetes Association annual conference, which took place in Philadelphia this past week. However, despite many new products and updates, there was a scarcity of cure news.
One of the major points of discussion at the conference was the much-debated JDRF Artificial Pancreas, which announced that “an outpatient study being conducted at multiple academic institutions has demonstrated the safety and feasibility of artificial pancreas (AP) device testing on an ambulatory basis.”
The study, presented at the ADA Scientific Sessions, featured two type 1 diabetics who used an AP for 18 hours during an overnight stay at a hotel, where they ate dinner and had breakfast followed by a morning walk. One patient managed to keep near-normal blood sugar numbers throughout the entire period of evaluation, while the second one had near-normal numbers for 78 percent of the time.
Diabetes Mine has published an extensive list of all the various gadgets and devices at the expo that the diabetes industry will be pumping out (no put intended) in the next few years to help type 1 diabetics better treat and manage their condition.
Many of these trial updates and products are exciting and we hope that they help people with type 1 diabetes to live easier. However, none of these devices, the AP included, have the ability to create a cure-like lifestyle for people now living with the disease.
The only way to accelerate the development of a Practical Cure is to start focusing on projects that aim to achieve that goal. We hope to see more cure projects represented at the ADA conference next year. You can help us achieve this goal by stipulating your donation toward a Practical Cure and using your voice to stimulate focus on Practical Cure research.
Read more about why we believe a cure is the main objective of diabetes donors in our 2011 report, “Why Donors Give”.
Can a grandmother with a artificial pancrease, and donate theirs to their granddaughter if it’s a match?
It is important that the JDCA is active in objectively evaluating how closely the diabetes charities adhere to their stated goal of achieving a cure. As the reach and influence of the JDCA grows, donors will increasingly come to require that these charities must target their contributions to their stated objective of achieving a real cure. Those of us interested in a cure must work together toward making a realistic cure a reality.